Ten Tips For Moving Up In Life

10. First, convince yourself that you are the awesomest thing to ever grace the planet Earth. You know everything. You can do anything. You are THE expert of ALL experts. Anyone who disagrees with you can kiss off. YOU ARE AWESOME. Repeat this saying whenever necessary. One day, you'll wake up, and you'll just believe it. You are Awesome Incarnate.

9. Kiss ass. A lot. Don't worry: you'll get used to the taste of it after a while. This goes hand in hand with Tip #7: no one really wants to hear the truth that their ideas suck, so, don't tell them! Then, take it one step further and tell the people who've paid you that their ideas are awesome. Tell them that THEY are awesome. Tell them how impressed you are by them and what they can do. Once you got them where you want them, move in for the kill (see Tip #2). Make everyone around you believe that you, Mister Awesome, are, in fact, so awesome that your opinion and approval means more than that of their family, friends, and professionals. Make lots of promises about how their incredible talent and smarts will take them everywhere they've ever wanted to go... so long as they follow your advice.

8. Assume that everyone around you is a complete, grade A, certified idiot. They probably are, anyway, and assuming that every single person around you is a bonafide airhead helps you when you use the next tip.

7. Lie. Lie about everything. No one really wants to hear the truth. In fact, you're probably doing a lot of it already without even knowing it. Every day people ask, "How are you doing?" And we all reply, "Fine, thanks," even when things are NOT fine. Starting to lie about bigger things will come easier when you truly believe that everyone you speak to is your intellectual inferior. Assuming people are imbeciles helps you lie because lying itself assumes that person being lied to is an idiot. When someone asks why your promises aren't showing up yet, just lie about the delay. You can't have them knowing that you aren't doing anything.

6. Combine Tip #7 with some good, old-fashioned gossip and opinions. If there's something you want but whoever's responsible for giving it to you is having doubts about your qualifications, tell that person that you did something similar in the past, even if you didn't. (This goes with Tips #7 & #8.) Tell the people you're dealing with that everyone else in the field doesn't know what they're doing or that these other people in the field (even if they are experts with WAY more experience than you) are just being negative and want this person to fail. If that doesn't work, tell the person questioning you that you have had dealings with the experts in question and that those people are complete losers who don't have a clue what they're doing and that they steal or do jobs half-assed (basically, assume that the experts in question have read this article and put it into practice). You really have to believe it. Be convincing! You don't want these questions coming up again!

5. When your promises never come through, just make more promises. Eventually, you will have to produce something, but it doesn't have to take up a lot of your time or energy. Making more promises will buy you enough time to slap something together to mollify the more persistent people you have to deal with to make it to the top.

4. If you are in a position of power, and someone appears to be smarter than you, tell them that they are ignorant, stupid, uninformed, and, if needs be, not qualified for your attention. Eventually, you'll break that person's spirit, and he or she will quit in frustration.

3. Adopt the mantra of "never enough." In ancient Greek philosophy, they called this pleanexia (play-AH-NEXEE-uh). You can never have too much power, too much money, or be too big of an asshole. You CAN make people respect you. But you have to keep these kinds of people under your control, believing everything you tell them, and under the assumption that you are going to help them, when you really aren't going to do anything. When questioned about anything you have said or done, use Tip #7 LIBERALLY. Tell the person that they heard you wrong, misunderstood you, or go all out and tell them that they don't know anything about the topic or what they are talking about. If confronted with facts from experts or written proof of what you said, deny it anyway. Most people give up. If confronted with more facts, figures, expert opinions, or pictures, simply ignore the proof and the people who confronted you with it. They'll go away eventually, and you can continue on with Tip #2:

2. Use people for all they're worth and then throw them away. Once someone has worn out their usefulness welcome, make sure they don't want to be anywhere around you or just stop taking their calls. After you got what you wanted from them, make them feel like crap whenever you can. Even if that person has paid you to do something, pretend they didn't. Pretend that you are doing that person a favor by working with them, long after you've cashed the check and spent the money.

1. Never, ever admit to anyone that you were only using someone. Never own up to your lies, overstatements, hyperbole, cheating, or stealing. Never admit that you never actually did a single thing (especially if you were paid for it). Lie for all you're worth if confronted. And if it ever goes to court, you better hope that they really were as stupid as you assumed they were.

There Are Days...

Before I say anything else, here is a link to an album on the band's gallery of AMAZING pictures that I took of the eclipse. You MUST check these out!

I used my dishwasher for the first time today. It seemed to work fine. It's noisy and it takes a long time to run a cycle. Other than that, I have no comments on it.

A client basically told me that I will have to start COMPLETELY over on the project because he changed his mind. He still has to pay me the $150 for the time I spent creating this other one. He doesn't know that yet.

I tried to update the band's message board and created a HUGE mess. I managed to straighten it out, but I am not happy.

I ran into this guy I used to know at a bar a few weeks ago. My Mom used to homeschool him. When I ran into him at the bar, I gave him my phone number thinking that he would never call. Unfortunately, I wrong. He never really got over his crush on me, even though it's been 15 years since I last saw him. He texted me for over an hour tonight, and, no matter how I tried to get rid of him (by not replying, by telling him to stop, etc), he just kept right on doing it! I finally shut my cell phone off in self defense.

Can't remember if I mentioned this (and I am too lazy to look), but, the other night, I got a call on my cell phone from a number I didn't recognize. This usually means work, so I answered it pleasantly, saying, "Crescent Moon..." I never even got to finish, because I was cut off by an extremely loud broadcast through the phone of some speech... with applause and everything! It sounded a lot like JFK, but it wasn't. The speaker was talking about Muslims and Islam and all kinds of things. I listened for over a minute, and then it occured to me that this might be one of those calls that "spoofs" your phone and makes calls to Outer Mongolia on your bill, so I hung up. And then I looked the number up on the Internet and found out that it was coming from an unlisted landline in Rhode Island, near Providence. Also, in my web search, I found out that this number randomly calls people at all hours of the day and night six and seven times a day without saying anything or just putting the phone up to the TV. There are lodged complaints on the Web about it. Anyway, so, that freaked me out, so I called the number, just to see, and it acted like it was a computer modem or something. So, I checked my toll free account to see which number they'd called: my cell phone number or the toll free number that routes to my cell phone. They'd called my toll free line, which ends up costing me TWICE because I get charged on my account limit for minutes on the toll free line, and , because it was before 9PM, I also get charged for minutes on my CELL PHONE. So, Kenny called the Providence police, who said that they would have their Internet and Communication Crimes Dept. look into it. Probably nothing will come of it, but, who knows?

Tomorrow is band practice, I think.

Songwriting

I've been in a musically creative mood the last couple of days. I re-wrote the chord structure to one song, re-wrote the lyrics to another song, and have started on another song. I only have bits and pieces at the moment, but you can tell that it is themed, and the lyrics I've been jotting down are all in a similar vein, despite the length of time over which these lyrics were written:

November 21, 2007
I don't know how many ways you're wrong
I just know that you are

January 10, 2008
It's a stretch for me
To suspend my reality
And use it in ways
For which it was never intended
And it's a stretch for me
To just sit back and believe
Everything you're telling me
And pretend that I am not offended

February 19, 2008
Please stop assuming that I am
The way that you would be
If you were me

The process of songwriting is majorly killer. I love it. I see how the threads are all coming together. It's amazing, seeing something being created right in front of you. And, even though I'm the one doing it, it feels like I'm not, almost as if I am nothing more than a tool for this song to come into existence. It's weird.

Okay, that was corny. Moving on....

Kenny's been gone the last two days to a conference in Spokane for Stratford Homes. He should have taken a bunch of my business cards as everyone there wanted a web site. He said that he probably got me some business, anyway, but I kind of doubt it.

I have to do school stuff tomorrow. Wednesday... I don't know. Thursday is band practice. Friday... I don't know again. In fact, I only know what I am up to on Thursday, really. And that might even change.

Boringness

My life is boring here lately, which, strangely, is a good thing. Nobody's bugging me badly, and I've been doing school work (a paper and a "group" project) and regular work and cleaning and playing guitar and piano and such.

Kenny and I went out on Thursday to the movies and saw Jumper, which wasn't bad... it wasn't great, either, but it was entertaining. We were going to go out to dinner, too, but, by the time the movie let out, everything was closed.

We went out Friday night, too. There was a steak special at the Cusick Tavern, so we went there, ate, and then went to the Legion for drinks and pool. We didn't stay long because we all intended to go to The Rio to hear the band, but the weather was so bad when we left the Legion that we decided to just call it a night around 9PM. I spent the remainder of the night looking up sheet music for songs we want to add to the set list.

Today, I got up a little later than usual, did some school work (checked on forum postings and downloaded other people's projects so I could comment on them tomorrow), worked on the site I referenced above, talked with Dad, worked out after Dad left, took a shower, and am now working on the site again. I had hoped to write today, but I don't think that I am going to be able to get to it.

Tomorrow, Kenny might have to go to a convention in Spokane for work, and my Mom kinda wanted to come over. Monday is band practice, and we will go over the sticking points in the cover material and start choosing which songs to record for the upcoming record. I want to write one more song - something that really rocks with BIG drums and bass - but I don't know if I will get the inspiration to do so. Tuesday on... I am not sure what is happening.

Of Ancient Breakfast Sausages and Other Things

So, Saturday, I went into Spokane in the afternoon with Kenny and my Dad. We started by going to JCPenney where Kenny got himself some new pants. Then, we went to Guitar Center, and I got my guitar strings. Next, I nagged Kenny into taking me to Dairy Queen and getting a Moo Latte (and to go to the bathroom... I don't know why JCPenney doesn't let anyone use their bathrooms, but they don't; you have to go into the Northtown mall to go pee, and I didn't actually go into Guitar Center due to the fact that the parking lot was covered with eight inches of slush and we had to park half a mile away from the store because of Outback Steakhouse's moronic, Gestapo-like idea that they can bogart public parking spaces for their "curbside take-away." Bastards).

After the quick Dairy Queen stop, we went to Michael's (the craft store), and I bought the acrylic resin for the "Weiner Award" as well as a new pair of scissors, some thread, some elastic, this neat rhinestone iron-on thing in the shape of a fleur-de-lis, a cute mirror for my livingroom, and some floral wire for another project. Next, we went out to eat at this place in Northpointe called Brooklyn's. They undercooked both my and Dad's hamburgers, even though we both asked for well-done. Luckily, neither of us suffered for it.

After that, we went to Wal*Mart where I bought party supplies and a treadmill and spent more than $300. Yipes.

Late that night, I put together the Weiner Award. Now, this acrylic stuff is dangerous. It says not to breathe it in, not to get it on your skin, not to accidentally get it in your mouth or your eyes... and the catalyst you add to it is even worse. Well, I got out this little container that Crisco shortening sticks come in that had a lid. I went out into the porch to mix everything. I took the cap off the acrylic resin, but they had soldered down another cap inside of it! I couldn't get it off, so, after trying to get the damned thing off for about 15 minutes, I finally went and got a church key and poked a hole in the can. I poured the stuff into an old frosting container and mixed it with the catalyst, and the whole place started to smell like cans of spray paint. It was terrible.

I finally got it all mixed up and poured it into the container with a thin piece of transparency paper, onto which I had written: "You're The WEINER!" with a Sharpie marker. I poured in more goop, and then stuck the breakfast sausage in there. It wanted to rise to the surface. So, I stuck a half a toothpick into the weinie and braced it against the lid of the Crisco container, put the whole thing in a Ziploc baggie and sealed it and brought it inside, because the damned stuff wouldn't set up right out in the cold; it has to be at room temperature.

I cleaned up everything else, but the whole house smelled like spray paint, despite my best intentions. Right before going to bed, I checked on the weinie, and found that the container was so hot that I couldn't touch it. It was as hot as any pan would get on the stove on "medium" or whatever. But, by morning, it looked fantastic. Kenny took it outside and ground off the sharp and uneven edges, and it looked like a real award. The Sharpie writing on the transparency didn't hold up real well, but I just re-wrote it on the outside of the award. That came off, too, but it can always be re-written. I don't care.

Sunday morning, I picked up clutter and cleaned the bathroom in preparation for the party. The DirecTV guy got here at about 11 AM and fixed our satellite dish, so we did have that for the party. I cooked pizzas, cheese sticks, taquitos, and put out chips and dip. I had 3 and half cases of beer and 3 and half cases of soda. It was a successful party. Here are a few pictures, including one of Carl winning the "Weiner Award." It's the only current picture in existence of the "Weiner Award." I'd definitely check it out.

We have band practice tonight. Other than that, I have no idea what's happening with the week.

LoOoOoOng Day

My day started out crappy. I was informed that the satellite was not working, so, before I had gotten any coffee or anything, I had to trudge through hip-deep snow to get to the satellite dish, only to find out that the rain gutter had become completely full of ice and collapsed on the satellite dish, knocking it down. It didn't knock it off the house, but it pointed it at the ground. So, I hammered out enough ice to get the gutter off the dish, and I pushed it back up where it belonged, but, of course, it did not go back to working. NoOoOoOoOoO.

So, I called Kenny who called DirecTV to get it fixed. They can't even get here until Sunday morning. Hopefully, they'll have it fixed before the party, and I think they will. In the off-hand chance that they don't, though, I will simply run a line from my Internet cable (which also sends me local stations) and we'll watch the game that way. No harm done.

Well, while Kenny was home, he started shoveling the three-plus feet of snow off the roof of the basement. Hunter went up to help him, but was wearing cowboy boots (which aren't very good for traction, don't you know), so Hunter was basically pushing the snow from high up where there was a board to brace himself. Kenny, however, was wandering all over the roof pushing snow. While he was shoveling the porch, he fell two or three times, finally causing me to get a length of rope and tie it to the banister of the stairwell and run it through Cait's window in an attempt to tie him off and keep him from falling onto the pavement below. However, this never came to fruition as Kenny got a phone call that the snow shoveling crews were all over at the office wanting paid. So, Kenny left to do that, and then he left the office to go get more cash to pay more people and then go get some rope to take out to a crew in Deer Valley who, apparently, had an epidemic of people falling off the roof.

Shortly thereafter, Kenny returned with a Bobcat to plow all the snow that was removed from the porch roof (which was now on the pavement below) so that people could safely come into to the house for band practice tonight and for the Superbowl party on Sunday. After doing that, he left again to run more errands.

In the meantime, the drummer showed up with his daughter and his cousin (both under the age of 13). The kids all went off to play, and the drummer proceeded to play drums for almost an hour while I was desperately trying to finish my theoretician profile before I had to cook dinner. I didn't get that done. I cooked dinner for the band, the drummer's cousin and daughter, and the kids and Kenny, and then we all started watching this DVD that the bassist brought with him. We watched it for a while, and then we practiced for maybe 40 minutes before calling it a night, as Kenny was giving up the ghost. He fell asleep on the couch about 10 minutes after we went on break. The band left after we scheduled another practice for Monday night, and I tried to finish the dishes (still not done with that) and finished the paper that was due at midnight. I missed the deadline by an hour, but I do hope that the instructor will be forgiving: after the day I had, somebody ought to take some pity on me that I even managed to write a word considering everything that is going on.

So, the PLAN is... tomorrow (Saturday), Kenny is going to work until noon or 12:30, and then we are going to Spokane. I am going to buy the resin I need to make the Weinie Award, some guitar strings, and some other stuff, and then I will come home and make the Weinie Award. Sunday is to be the party, and, hopefully, we'll have the satellite back in working order. Monday, band practice.

But with Kenny's work schedule (and with the impending loss of our only running car at the moment due to the fact that it got rear-ended at a stop light in Sandpoint and it will need to be repaired at some point), I don't think I am going to get to do ANYTHING I want and/or need to do.

Writing. Studying. Researching.

I've spent the vast majority of the day researching a communication theoretician for a paper that I must turn in my 11:59PM Friday. The only reason I was doing it today was that, while I was writing in Devil's Handiwork last night, I suddenly remembered that something was due on February 1st. So, I checked, and a 5 page paper was what was due. Sigh.

Yesterday, like I said, I wrote in Devil's Handiwork, but I also did a bunch of domestic things. I did up all the dishes and cleaned up the kitchen. Carl came over and helped me install the lighting fixture I bought for the bathroom.

As for Devil's Handiwork, here's a brief excerpt of some stuff I wrote yesterday:

"So, you're the psychic," Victor said after a while, breaking my reverie.

I forced myself not to react. "No," I said, finally. "I'm not a psychic, but I’ll take four-ninety-nine a minute to tell your future."

He laughed. "Got a smart mouth on you. Rich never mentioned that." He was silent for a moment. "So what is it that you do, anyway?"

"Is it important that you know?"

"I guess not," Victor said. He smiled and flipped some switches on the panel. "Let's just say that your reputation precedes you."

"Do you mind if we don't talk?" I said.

He grinned. "Yeah, actually." He cast me a side-long glance. "How about some small talk? That okay?"

I remained stoic, to say the least. The last thing I needed was a lovesick cling-on in the likeness of a casino high roller. No, thank you.

I managed to keep him off the topic of me for about three hours. I got him talking about his casino and the day-to-day operations involved with that for almost an hour. Then, he went off on some tangent about the government for another hour or so. When I came back from a trip to the restroom – finally free of the God-awful sequins and wig – somewhere between Denver and Houston, he started in again.

"So, how did they recruit you?" he finally asked.

"You don't give up, do you?"

"No," he said. "So, how about it?"

"Not on your life."

"I can handle it," he prodded. He reached out and laid his hand on mine.

I placed the index finger of my left hand on a nerve at the back of his neck, and I watched as his face went slack. "Listen, Victor," I said. "I think you’re a decent guy and probably don’t mean any harm, but I have to warn you, now, okay? You're on thin ice. Trust me: you do not want to know anything about me. The less you know, the safer you are." I removed his temporarily paralyzed hand from mine. "In fact, it's probably for the best that you forget you ever saw me once this plane lands."

As soon as I took my hand from his neck, his muscles twitched back to life, and he glared at me, his face bright red. "You could have just said, 'no'. You didn’t have to go all Spock on my ass."

"Did I make myself clear?" I asked.

"Crystal."

Interesting Video

Click here (I can't get the embed fuction to work today.)

Vapor Lock

I've been in a funk. Nothing really set it off, but, in a funk, I remain. Le sigh.

Friday, I got my refund check from my school money, so, Friday night, I went out to dmajorfifth's and the cluster picker's house and repaid them the last of the money that Kenny borrowed from them almost 2 years ago. Then, I went up to Sandpoint.

My first stop was at Home Despot (intentional misspelling) to try to buy the casting resin I need to create the Weinie Award for the winner of the Pick 'Em League I've been hosting on the band's message board. This is the second year I've done it, and, this year, I wanted to continue the "Great Weinie Caper" by gifting the winner of the Pick 'Em League with a "trophy" of this petrified, ancient breakfast sausage. (God, that sounds hilarious!) Anyway, [unscheduled rant break]

Arg!!! Sprint just sent another of their customers to me via my toll free number!!! Do these people NEVER LEARN?!?!?!?

[end: unscheduled rant break]

Anyway, back to Home Despot: I went there to look for two things. One, I want to get a portable dishwasher; and, two, I needed that acrylic resin. They didn't have the dishwasher, so I went to the paint department to look for the resin. The guy in the paint department immediately said that they didn't have the resin, but they did have a polyurethane-type stuff that would do the job. They were out of the stuff, which is $20 per quart. So, I bought nothing there. After that, Kenny and I went to this Mexican restaurant in the same parking lot with Home Despot, and we had dinner. The food was decent (not as good as the Mexican restaurant in Newport, but edible).

After that, we went to a friend's house and we stayed there for quite a while, talking, so we didn't get to Wal-Mart until almost 9PM. I hadn't been shopping in a good long while, so there was a LOT of stuff that I needed. Rather than bore you with that, I'll tell you this: while there, I saw this little sweeper vac thing that looked perfect for small vaccuuming things around the house. It was misplaced on the shelf, so I had no clue how much it was, but I bought it, anyway. Also, I purchased some hair color. When I got home, I took the vaccuum thing out of the box and started to assemble it. That's when I realized that the manufacturer had not included the part that attached the handle to the unit, and they had not included the battery charger plug. So, that had to go back.

I had also purchased a new lighting fixture for the bathroom (which will have to be installed with the electricity shut off), and a clip-on desk lamp to go over the stove, so I could see to cook. Well, Saturday, Kenny went to the store, I had him get me more lightbulbs, since the kids used them all. He bought 100 watt bulbs. I told him when he was putting one in the desk lamp thing that it was too powerful for the lamp, but he said that he "didn't buy weinie bulbs." I let it go. I was cooking some chicken at the time, and boiling some pasta. I'd just taken the pasta off the stove and drained it and gone over to the fridge to get the butter when I heard this horrible BANG behind me. I turned around to see that the lightbulb had exploded all over the top of the stove. Luckily, the pasta was well away from the glass fragments, and I'd put a lid on the pan with the chicken in it, so the food was all right. But smoke was rolling out from the desk lamp. I thought it was ruined, too, but, the next day, Kenny went and got some 60 watt bulbs, and the lamp still works and it hasn't exploded that bulb.

Last night, after failing to find a portable dishwasher at either Home Despot or Wal*Mart, I went online and found exactly what I was looking for. So, I ordered it! Now, I don't have to do the dishes anymore!! Yay!!

As for me, I should be working on Devil's Handiwork.

Ding Dong

The engineer finally sent me the last two songs. Out of the five, I like what they've done on one of them. I don't know about you, but 1/5ths of something isn't a lot to me....

Anyway, I've conveniently uploaded the songs to my server. Internet Explorer should "Right Click/Save Target As..." and Firefox should Right Click "Save Link As." Both work the same, I found out today....

The Cover

Strings

My thoughts: I like "The Cover." It's starting to sound like an actual song, and they are doing things (that I like) that I wouldn't have thought to do, which is what I would actually pay a producer to do. As for "Strings," it is the most important song to get right, and they've clearly blown the feeling the music needs to have to support the lyrics. The verses are okay... but the choruses and the bridge are not right. The choruses and bridge will have to be completely redone. The music has to tell the story the same way the lyrics do because, if these get sold to TV or film, they probably won't use the version with the vocals and lyrics. And right now, the music isn't doing that.

I spent the entirety of the day watching football, and the Superbowl will not be "super" anything. Were it not for the fact that I have several people playing in the football pool, I might not watch it at all. As it is, I will be having a party here for the Superbowl and will likely give out the prizes for the pick 'em league.

Tomorrow, we are to have band practice, and the kids are out of school for the day. Tuesday, I don't know. Wednesday, Kenny has pool league. Thursday should be band practice again and I have a paper due.

Blech

I have heartburn and it refuses to go away. If I eat a Rolaids, it will go away for two or three hours and then be back, burning my throat. Arg.

Band practice went well. We got through some of the tougher songs, but it is apparent to me that we still need to practice them a BUNCH more.

I don't have that much to say right now; I'm only posting because today is the 4th anniversary of this blog!

Fun

Cait and I played Scrabble and - would you believe - she got 429 points and I got 435?!?! No, seriously: I spelled "christen" (building off an 'r' already there, and using all my letters) on a double word score, and, a play later, Cait spelled "virtual" on a triple word score and also spelled "rarer" at the same time (building off "rare" with her 'r'). I spelled "zephyr" on a double word score, and Cait spelled "zodiac." We also spelled "qua" and "jade" and "axes" and "phantom" and "nature" and "sword." Aw, hell. I took a picture with my cell phone. Here it is:

Circulent

I did some work on Devil's Handiwork! I actually created a name for the company Shelby worked for as a spy: Circulent.

I know... you're thinking, what the hell is that? Well, I was looking up stuff on corporate symbology (and got all sidetracked on how Freemasons and the Illuminati are rumored to influence corporate logos and branding and whatnot, which I don't buy, really)... and the star, Sirius, kept coming up in the symbols. Sirius is, of course, the brightest star in the sky... the Dogstar... Canis major... aaaannnyyyyyway....

So, I am thinking, "Sirius... Sirius... Sirius...." while looking at a Wikipedia article on the naming etymolgy of companies. And I kept reading on there where these companies just jam two unrelated words together and create a new word for their company. So, I looked up Sirius in the dictionary for ideas. And it said "bright, shining" and I thought, Luminescent.

So I go to look that up, and my eye lands on another word: lucluent. I forget the exact meaning of that, but it is pronounced, "LOO-ku-LENT." So, I combined that word with "Sirius," spelled it with a "C" and got Circulent. (Which would be pronounced as "SIR-ku-LENT.")

Now that word has some connotations! Light, brightness, the star as a symbol(more Freemasonry crap, if I need to add it for some reason), the star as a... star... PLUS... it sounds like it could have something to do with a circle, which could come in handy, too!

Well, I Did It

I am officially a Gonzaga student. I now have to buy books, contact the financial aid office, and get acquainted with my professors. I can't wait!

Happy New Year

Well, lessee... My last journal entry was just before Christmas. We had a nice holiday, and I kept myself very busy, as usual. I've got one major project to do, and then I am probably going to do some work for a friend of mine this coming week.

Dad and Carl came over here for football on Sunday, and we played Hearts, which was fun. I spent the vast majority of the New Year's holiday with my cousin, his girlfriend, and The Twins playing Dungeons & Dragons (showing my nerd colors here). We went out to the Legion on New Year's Eve and listened to a karaoke band (which is just as weird as it sounds; amazingly, they were still able to mess up) and drank.

Other than that, nothing's happening. I have the urge to write, but I don't have the motivation at the moment. I am in limbo because this school thing is taking so long to get going.

Life and Stuff

I'll recap my weekend real fast: I had a great visit with one of my best friends Friday afternoon, and I made sugar cookies later in the day and got more stuff into the people at Gonzaga. Saturday, Kenny didn't want to take me grocery shopping, so I ended up waiting for my Mom and Dad, who were going to Sandpoint, anyway, to do their Christmas shopping and grocery shopping. I also went to visit another of my best friends and took him his Christmas present. We had a nice visit; it's always nice to see my friends in person. E-mail is so impersonal.

So, after shopping, I rushed home. It was 5 til 6 and I had to be at the bowling alley at 6PM for a bowling thing we'd signed up for. I always win money for stinking at these things, and Saturday was no different: I bowled a 47, a 55, and a 74. I won $10 for playing badly. Yay!

Afterward, we all went up to the Cusick Tavern for the free dinner, and then I went over to visit my bass player and we had a nice visit about computers. After that, we went home and I went to bed. Got up Sunday morning at 8:30 AM and watched the Steelers lose while wrapping Christmas presents. Then, I baked the sugar cookies for which I had made the dough on Friday. Dad and Dad's friend, Carl, came over to watch the later games. Carl brought pizza and we played Hearts during the late game and munched sugar cookies.

Test Taking

So, Kenny and I went to Moscow yesterday. It was an all-day trip. I had fallen asleep in my recliner at about 9PM Wednesday night, and went to bed at about 11:30-ish or so. I then woke up at 4:15 AM. I tried to go back to sleep, but nothing worked. So, at 5AM, I got up and printed off a practice exam for the test I was to take.

The test is called the "Miller Analogies Test," and, as the title will lead you to believe, the entire test is made up of analogies. The subject matter covers everything from pop culture to history; from literature to word games; from math to sciences. You really have to have a wide knowledge base (and a love for trivia, I think) to do well on this test. Just as a yardstick, the average test taker of the MAT gets 30 questions right out of 120.

Anyway, so I took the practice test, and missed 21 questions. But, it didn't make me feel any more confident, as the test was a simulated one concocted by Harvard and was rather old. But it got my brain pull-started. I got ready, and we left here at 9:30AM. We took Highway 41 to Post Falls and got on the freeway and then headed south toward Pullman.

And that's where things got seriously FUBAR'd. We knew that the LTD has the ability to have one of those window washer things (the liquid squirter part), but it didn't work. We assumed that it was out of fluid, even though Kenny had glanced at the engine compartment once to see if there was a reservoir, but he was unable to locate it then... but he really wasn't looking. Before we reached Post Falls, the windshield was COVERED in road grime. We stopped at a gas station in Spirit Lake and really looked for the windshield cleaner reservoir. All the plumbing for it is there, but the tank itself was missing. So, we cleaned the windshield there.

So, we're heading south, and we encounter a very dense fog. It was so thick that we couldn't see 25 feet around us in any direction. We passed Steptoe Butte, but we couldn't see it. Couldn't even see the wheat fields around us. What with the fog and the road grime being thrown up by the semi in front of us and coating our windshield, Kenny was, essentially, driving blind. So, I took to throwing bottled water (left in the car from this past football season, as the kids tended to leave full bottles of water in the car where they got pushed under the seats) on the windshield. I accomplished this by rolling down my window, holding the bottle by the very bottom, and flinging the water catapult style across the windshield. This worked quite well.

However, at about the halfway mark, we went to turn on the wipers, and this horrible electric burning smell came out from the dashboard and the wipers stopped working. We were convinced that the wiper motor had burned up on us, in a dense fog, behind a truck, on sloppy roads, with a snow storm coming... and we weren't yet even to Pullman, much less Moscow, and we had a return trip to make.

About 10 miles down the road, Kenny decides to try the wipers again, and, lo and behold, they WORK! Heh. We finally find the place I need to take my test, and I go in and get signed in and pay for the test. I expected the test to be hard. It wasn't. Well, not really. Having gone over the practice test helped me a lot, I think, as I got a raw score of 437, which, as my advisor at Gonzaga put it, puts me in the 90th percentile of people who take the MAT.

Anyway, so, we headed back to Spokane. More fog. More water splashing. Went to Denny's for dinner. We got home at about 7:30PM or so, so the whole trip took almost 12 hours.

School Stuff

Tomorrow, I am going down to Moscow to take a required test to get into the Master's program at Gonzaga. This little test will cost me $75 to take. What fun.

In the meantime, I had to write a "statement of purpose," also for getting into the Master's program. Normally, I would share, but I have several good reasons for not doing it this time. First, it contains too much personal information about me. Second, it contains too much personal information about other people. Third, I've heard that people have a tendency to just steal these things when they need to write a letter of intent or statement of purpose for college... so, I will keep it to myself. Let's just say that my advisor liked the letter and leave it at that.

Not Much Going On

I've not done a lot in the last few days. I applied to Gonzaga. I filled out a new FAFSA. I still have to write a "letter of intent" that addresses why I want to pursue this particular degree and get two letters of recommendation.

I wrote another new song. In the last two months, I've written three new songs. I mentioned one: "Moonshine Valentine." The others are "Honor Among Theives" and "If The Stars Align." The first two I am pretty happy with, but the last one needs some lyrical work, I think. Just a couple of touch ups, especially in the pre-choruses and bridge.

Stuff

So far today, I've taken a shower, almost finished my Christmas cards, and decided to do something stupid.

Yes, indeed: I've decided to return to school for my Master's degree. I need to do some research very quickly if I am to get started by the Spring Semester at Gonzaga... I originally thought about law school and becoming a lawyer, but that would require me to go to classes at least two or three days a week.